Consolation?
Much as I hate to, I have to disagree with Norm on this one. I think he’s misrepresenting what Dawkins said, with the annotation about the depth and finesse of the adolescent secularist. I don’t think Dawkins is making a shallow point at all, or that he’s expressing a flip certitude, or that he’s being callous about the deaths and griefs of others. On the contrary. (I say that partly because I remember his reaction to September 11 – there was certainly plenty of emotion behind that contribution.) The deaths and griefs are precisely the point. It cuts two ways, this business of clutching at God after a tragedy: yes some people get consolation from the thought of God, but at the price of getting consolation from exactly the guy who caused the tragedy. I think part of Dawkins’ thinking here is that that’s not really a consolation – that there’s a core of bitterness to it. Think of it this way: there you are, minding your own business, harming no one, and suddenly in comes a huge guy who beats you up, knocks your house down, kills all your relatives and friends, poisons your water supply, and trashes all the roads so that you can’t get help. A Job number, in short. Or a Banda Aceh number. You lie there on the ground crying, in pain and fear and agonizing grief. Then the huge guy comes and sits down next to you – and in desperation you crawl into his lap and he cuddles you and says ‘There there.’ And you feel ever so slightly consoled.
Is Dawkins really being so very brutal and callow to suggest that it actually might be more consoling to realize that nothing conscious caused the earthquake to happen? Epicurus wouldn’t have thought so, Lucretius wouldn’t have thought so. That was the very essence of Epicureanism: pointing out that fear of the gods was an unnecessary source of misery. Part of the core of bitterness in having to turn to God for consolation after a disaster is the knowledge that God let the disaster happen. Yes, people do it, and it no doubt works for some (if they can comparmentalize with enough rigour, so that they forget that the God they’re turning to for comfort is the same one who made them so unbearably miserable and bereaved), but why can’t Dawkins genuinely think that a naturalistic explanation of disaster is also comforting because it’s impersonal? And that is what he says, after all.
Of course, if you can derive comfort from such a monster, I would not wish to deprive you. My naive guess was that believers might be feeling more inclined to curse their god than pray to him, and maybe there’s some dark comfort in that. But I was trying, however insensitively, to offer a gentler and more constructive alternative. You don’t have to be a believer. Maybe there’s nobody there to curse…Science cannot (yet) prevent earthquakes, but science could have provided just enough warning of the Boxing Day tsunami to save most of the victims and spare the bereaved…And if the comforts afforded by outstretched human arms, warm human words and heartbroken human generosity seem puny against the agony, they at least have the advantage of existing in the real world.
I don’t find that at all flip, or unattractive, or like an adolescent; in fact I find it rather moving.
As if depth and finesse would get the point across. I admire Richard Dawkins for trying, but I fear that the boneheadedness that conflates the natural and supernatural is proof against both finesse and blunt instruments.
Anything’s gotta be better than the view expressed by the Westboro Baptist Church that you guys linked to in the news section. God sent the tsunami to kill gay Swedish tourists?
So, to summarise, God killed 250,000 people in order to bump off 2000 Swedish tourists, on the offchance that some of them might be gay? From this we can deduce that God is actually a gibbering psychopath.
Though thinking about it, the idea that God is a raving underpants-on-his-head loon strikes me as quite a plausible theology.
Phil, I fear that these Baptists are more funny than they are representative. It is to be feared that more people will be the victim of “God sent the Tsunami’s to show us that we need to increase the brotherly feelings amongst the world citizens”. Not long after being so attracted some risk a bigger attraction: that of helping God to increase these brotherly feelings.
Ophelia, I have to disagree with you on this one – I don’t think Norm was critical enough! Dawkins wants to say to those overwhelmed by grief who turn to religious consolation that at least human consolations have the advantage of existing in the real world. This is indeed shallow: in terms of logic it’s question-begging; in terms of consolatory power it’s false (since illusory beliefs can be genuinely consoling); in terms of personal attitude it’s cheaply patronising. Gradgrind himself could have been proud of Dawkins’ approach. All this is the case even if atheism is true (as I myself believe it to be). And it’s not just in moral matters that Dawkins is shallow; he wants to claim that all the ‘why’ questions about the occurrence of the tsunami are ones to be answered by science (here, plate tectonics). But this is just (crudely) wrong, and if it were right, we’d be ruling out not only religion but also philosophy. There are plenty of questions about why this happened to the people it happened to, and why the world is such that these things happen in it, to which science *assumes* an answer (standardly, a different answer from the religious one). But that can hardly show that the questions don’t exist! Myself I believe that the answer science assumes is the right one, but it isn’t *provided* by science, and science isn’t the only important form of reasoning.
I have to weigh in the other side and say that Dawkins was excessively soft on religion in his reply. Is all this supposed to boil down to a competition about which approach is more consoling (the one that matches what we know or the one with no evidence at its disposal)? Religion makes little enough sense without the problem of theologically trying to rationalise tsunamis; God won’t become more real if you come up with a convoluted explanation of how this could all fit into his scheme of things (even without nonsense like hundreds of thousands of corpses as collateral damage in an attempt to set Sweden “straight” – someone send God a map so he can find Sweden and spare all those innocents next time…).
Don’t follow, Eve. In what way does saying that the tsunami was caused by an earthquake which resulted from slippage between two tectonic plates damage philosophy? Or, if it comes to that, religion? Very few modern Christians believe that God directly intervenes in the world in this way, after all, and if there is a problem with Dawkins’ response that’s it – one extreme shouting at another.
Well Eve I think you and Norm are both reading what Dawkins says too narrowly. The ‘really existing’ part is indeed only part. The basic question is (surely) how do you get the consolation without embracing the sadistic monster? If you turn to the sadistic monster for comfort how do you avoid the very frightening (and grief-inducing) questions about blame, guilt, causation, responsibility? Dawkins’ point was that an impersonal cause may be more consoling than a personal one, an unconscious one than a conscious one. I still don’t see why that is necessarily a more shallow view, let alone a patronizing one.
Chris, you’re absolutely right, *that* claim doesn’t in any way undermine philosophy. What does, I think, (or would if it were true)is Dawkins’ further claim that the ‘why’ question to which the plate tectonics stuff is the answer is the only kind of ‘why’ question around this issue. That’s just manifestly false.
Ophelia, the issue you raise here is too big to deal with in a brief comment. Let me indicate the kind of answer I’d like to give by pointing out that in the face of the problem of evil I like many others find it impossible to believe in an benevolent Creator, but I don’t find the spectacle of a world in which in the end love, and everything else I value, comes to nothing is in any way a comforting one. Atheism has plenty going for it, but I don’t think we should pretend that profound consolation is one of those things.
The question about deriving comfort from one’s tormentor can be philosophically fascinating and would also be relevant if it described a state of affairs that actually exists on this scale (of course, it must exist in many real cases; that of a child towards an alternately loving and abusing parent immediately leaps to mind). The readings criticised by OB may well have been too narrow, but I wouldn’t underestimate the importance of that “really existing” point. Dawkins does, after all, talk about “a gentler and more constructive alternative.” I don’t think anyone’s denying that God and religion can be consoling. But what is more “constructive,” scientific understanding that could lead to prevention, combined with the consolation of human solidarity in the face of catastrophe, or expending our intellectual powers on figuring out what God meant by it all (at best; the worst includes further shoring up religious establishments that destroy quite enough human life without waiting for God to intervene with a tsunami).
Agreed, Eve – I don’t think the consolation at issue is a profound one either. But I do think that those who hymn the virtues (so to speak) of religion as consolation overlook or blur its power to frighten and hurt. I realize some people manage it – manage to believe in the comforting God while ignoring the punitive or randomly sadistic one. But a lot of people don’t. Memoirs, autobiographies, and novels (not to mention the book of Job) are packed with accounts of people tormented by fear of hell, fear of hell for others, by guilt, a sense of injustice, etc. I do think that aspect of the question should not be left out of account when people upbraid Dawkins.
Ophelia, I agree with what you say – religion’s produced a lot of suffering in its own right, and this shouldn’t be underestimated (though I don’t want to accept that promoting guilt is alwasy a bad thing – some guilt is highly justified.) But I doubt if fear of hellfire is uppermost in the mind of the bereaved right now. I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone who has just been so hideously bereaved of any consolation they can get. And I find the spectacle of Dawkins coming along in so self-satisfied a manner to set them right about their beliefs and about how to get consoled (‘don’t do it like this, do it like that!’) pretty nauseating. It’s (partly) the timing that’s so adolescent – he’s just got to hammer home his point, even though there might be more important things right now than the battle about atheism. I doubt if sensitivity towards those who are suffering involves in the first instance lecturing them about their mistakes. And we are still at the first instance – the tsunami only happened a few days ago.
Well…I suppose I see what you mean, Eve. But it is the letters page of the Guardian, not the living rooms of the bereaved.
And as for hellfire…I’m not so sure. Because I think that is one of the ways people think about this kind of thing, and all the more so when they’re bereaved – unless they’ve decided or learned or been helped not to. I think they start to ask ‘why’ and go from there to worries about causation, which lead to horrible gnawing thoughts about omissions and comissions either of their own or of the people they’re bereaved of. You know – either ‘did they all do something terrible and only I am spared?’ Or ‘did I do something terrible and they have to pay?’ Or ‘did we all do something terrible and they pay with death and I pay with grief?’
I really, seriously think that once you believe a conscious intentional entity makes earthquakes happen, the door is open for horrible painful devouring torturing thoughts like that. I agree with you about guilt, but that kind of guilt is probably surplus to requirements (as I think you agree).
Now…all I’m saying is that the door is open for those thoughts. Or unlocked, rather. I expect some people do manage not to open it. But I just do think Dawkins has a valuable (and merciful) point about the advantage of eliminating the malevolent deity.
You may be right about timing, tone, etc. But then again for every bereaved person Dawkins has pained, who knows if there may be someone brooding on occulted guilt who is somewhat soothed by what he says.
Ophelia, I’m not sure Dawkins is so very well placed to press this point home – in The Devil’s Chaplain he makes a big deal of how comfy and secure religious belief is (reference via Pootergeek) whereas we atheists are supposed to be all brave and bracing standing up to the chill knowledge of an impersonal universe. I find this kind of thing self-admiring in a very adolescent kind of way, which no doubt is partly why I’m ready to see the current statement of his smug little orthodoxies as adolescent. In any case I don’t think he can have it both ways: if religious believers are in desperate need of rescuing from their terrifying views about hellfire then they shouldn’t also be the object of his patronising contempt for not being as intellectually brave as Prof. Dawkins.
Apparently it’s bad taste (or ‘bad timing’) for someone to mention after a horrible calamity that God does not exist. Odd that (to me) it might have been motivated by all the religious responses and outpourings to that same event – are those in good taste? It is the believers that prey upon hurt people. They peddle their opiate to people at their weakest. Religionists are the worse ambulance chasers.
Sorry, but true consideration for one’s brother entails the truth. We are not children who have lost puppies here. Lies, even consoling ones, even well-meaning ones, are lies. Delusions about a final reward are delusions. The truth, however unpleasant, is preferable to the alternative.
Hmm, Eve – does Dawkins really sound as smug and self-admiring in the actual essay(s) in question as he does in your summary?
He’s never struck me that way. Of course that could be because I share the same smug little orthodoxies (although in sober truth I don’t really think it’s atheists who go in for smug orthodoxies, fashionable though it is in many places [cf. John Gray] to say so) – but (naturally) I don’t think it is. He’s never struck me as smug and self-admiring but rather as embattled. There is an awful lot of protectiveness and sentimentality about religion abroad in the world right now – yea verily even in the putatively godless UK. I think Dawkins is blunt rather than smug, and I think he’s blunt because so many people are so very blurry and woolly and tactful.
Well, unlike a lot of Christians I am also a geologist so I have no trouble with a plate tectonics or ‘shit-happens’ naturalistic view of this disaster. I am also delighted to report the survival of one near and dear person who .
I found Dawkins’ comments unexceptionable; he is consistent and not strident or contemptuous, unlike many others. But then I have been a fan since ‘The Blind Watchmaker’.
Let’s note that the argumentative battleground between theists and rationalists is not the same place one tries to serve the bereaved. People may be in both arenas, so tact is appropriate, but the letters pages of papers are full of people shouting at each other because each letter is out of the context that the author was writing from.
Frankly, I would like to see the point-scoring atheist newspaper columnists get a life instead of attacking others; and those fringe types who claim godly intervention against sinners are, let’s face it, nut-jobs. People in this debate are worthy of the respect and politeness due to decent fellow humans. Why go out of our way to moralise against them?
Maybe the salient question here is whether it is more praiseworthy to love/respect one’s fellow man enough to lie to him, or to tell him the truth.
Stewart: Is the lie ever preferable to thinking adults? I understand “tell all the truth / but tell it slant,” but lies?
I was raised Christian, and as an adult, I resented many of the lies I was told in my religious instruction. In retrospect, I think many of them stemmed from the leadership’s very belief that I was indeed some sort of child unable to confront the world. When the “flock” is constantly treated as inept sheep, they are, I believe, more likely to become or remain so.
Amy, we clearly agree on this, but it seems that not only those doing the telling find it necessary; there seems to be no shortage of adults who would rather hear a comforting but baseless assertion than a hard fact they find unpalatable. It’s especially easy to do that when the subject is what happens after one’s life. Who would argue that an upbringing conducive to such inclinations did not play a large part? And I think that’s where we non-believers ought to exercise the most humility, by not underestimating the power of childhood indoctrination. For someone brought up knowing nothing else, it’s not a question of stupidity or lack of intellect, but a fear to let one’s thoughts even go in a direction that could undermine the basis of one’s prescribed worldview.
I quite agree with Dawkins.
The tsunami was not of malice, agression, intentional harm, corrosive lies, greed etc. It is these things, these acts of people, that cause me anxiety, mistrust and fear.
The risk of an earthquake less so since its effects can be mitigated with staying fit, swimming skills, identifying pre-tsunami tides, applying seismic and communication technology for early detection etc.
If I personify nature or think its will should not be subverted then no doubt I would feel more nervous.
I’d quite like to be able to suffer consoling delusions at will but like many atheists, its not really a choice when doubt strolls along and punctures the fiction.